If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

The only thing I got from this episode was that overworking your Pokémon would make them stronger and it does. This episode was pretty boring though. I liked AJ though and I wished we could've seen how he changed, or how he didn't change, in the Pokémon League.

Fighting for real American turtles everywhere. Pro-Turtle since 6/30/13

I agree that this episode was a boring one. I didn't really like AJ at all. I think Ash was right to stop him and his crazy training methods. Being persistant is one thing, putting metal bracers around a Pokémon seems a tad extreme.

Coming off his 10th win in a row against nameless trainers, Ash starts to get cocky. The gang run into A.J.'s Gym, an unofficial gym owned by a Character of the Day called A.J. who is aiming to get 100 wins in a row before he challenges a gym leader, he only has 98 wins so far. A.J. and Ash battle, trash talking each other beforehand, and A.J.'s Sandshrew stomps Ash's Pidgeotto and Butterfree, causing Pikachu to refuse to battle, giving A.J. his 99th win. We get to see A.J. using Macho Braces to train his Sandshrew, and item that won't show up ingame until Ruby and Sapphire, which also works as a nod to EV training as well. Ash complained about A.J. treating his Pokémon too harshly, and asks Brock and Misty to back him up. However, instead Brock compliments A.J. on the specialized food he prepares for his Pokémon. Jessie, James, and Meowth then tried to steal Pikachu, but ended up accidentally taking Sandshrew instead. It escapes, A.J. challenged Team Rocket to a battle, and his Sandshrew defeated Team Rocket, winning A.J. the final victory needed to set off and collect Gym Badges. Having settled their differences, Ash and A.J. part ways, intending to meet up again at the Pokemon League.

The 100 match counting board and the gym were a nice idea. Good to see Ash being put back on earth in a hard way, he was becoming arrogant. AJ was too hard, but not mean. If I'd be a Pokemon trainer in the anime, I'd be nicer to my Pokemon and train them in another way. I liked this episode, 10/10, because Kanto rocks!

This episode in some ways symbolized the ways how people tend to train their Pokémons and the character of the day (AJ) was just badass for the way how he managed his own, unofficial gym. Also, don't you love how cocky Ash is now after he won his first two badges XD.

The episode was nice, although AJ was an annoying prick. For a second time, the annoying prick is somehow right in the end. Don't know why. Putting metal bracers around a pokemon and making ground types swim isn't proper training, it's just dumb.

The episode was always blah to me. I didn't like how Ash was too confident, which resulted in his lost. Well, it goes to show you, things can blow up in your face. But, it was kind of funny when AJ's Pokemon refused to go with Ash.

Loved A.J. man, his training seemed brutal but then you also saw the love and care he showed his Pokemon (their won personal Pokemon food, etc) you warmed to him. His Sandshrew was bad ***, wonder how strong it'd be now, years on. Good episode to highlight Ash's development as a character as well. The writers nailed the childish, arrogant and cocky side of his character which would've built up after his early success.

A.J., like Samurai and Giselle, was a character I really hoped to see again.

Having traveled through the Kanto (x2), Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos regions, plus the Orange & Decolore Islands, competing in six regional Pokémon League competitions, winning the Orange League, defeating the Kanto Battle Frontier, seeing/ meeting each of the rare and powerful Legendary/ Mythical Pokémon, some on numerous occasions, and continually fighting vigilantly against six villainous teams, Ash has apparently now decided to go to school.

The Kanto saga has some great episode, but it also has some bad episodes. I think this is one of those bad episodes.
In this episode, Ash defeates 10 unknown trainers(mostly offscreen)in a row, then he starts to get overconfident and cocky. Later the group runs into A.J.'s Gym, which is an unofficial gym. AJ got 98 wins in a row(I think he got those wins by beating unexperienced rookie trainers)and his goal is to get 100 wins in a row before he goes on a journey. Inside the gym, Ash suddenly starts braging about his 10 wins and his, badges(and magically his nose starts growing). Then A.J arrogantly calls the gyms "failure city" and "wimpsville". Brock and Misty gets angry and tells Ash to defeated him. After they start the battle, COTD A.J.'s experienced Sandshrew beats Ash's unexperienced Pidgeotto and Butterfree. Seeing this Ash's Pikachu gets scared and refuses to battle, Ash tries to get Pikachu to battle, but he thundershocks him.(Wow Pikachu, you're really a fearless Pokémon, aren't you?) Because of this, A.J. gets his 99th win. Later Ash and co. sees A.J. using metal Braces to train his Sandshrew and other Pokémon. Ash didn't like his so-called training methods and complained about A.J. treating his Pokémon way too harshly. He also asked Misty and Brock to back him up, but instead of backing him up .... Brock compliments A.J. on the food he prepares for his Pokémon. Ugh! Brock, is that all you care about?. Later Jessie, James, and Meowth tries to steal Pikachu, but they accidentally steals Sandshrew instead. It escapes and A.J. challenged Team Rocket to a battle. As expected, his Sandshrew defeats Team Rocket, winning A.J. his 100th victory(Whoa, defeating Team Rocket counts as a gym battle win?). Then Ash and A.J. part ways, so they can meet up again at the Pokemon League.....which they never did.

Overall, this episode was a badly written and it's one of my least favorite episodes from the Kanto saga. I can't stand A.J, because of his arrogant and annoying personality. Ash was arrogant in this episode too, but he was right about A.J's training methods. Putting metal bracers on Pokémon and making ground type Pokémon swim isn't a good way to train Pokémon. In fact, it's a dumb way to train Pokémon.
Geez, I hope someday Ash will meet with A.J. again and they'll battle. It would be interesting to Ash stomping A.J.'s Sandshrew with his Sceptile, but sadly the chances of that happening are very slim.

So it looks like we've reached our first filler episode—“Clefairy and the Moon Stone” apparently wasn't filler, strangely enough. I personally can't tell for the life of me the difference between filler episodes and regular episodes, even when it's spelled out for me. Apparently filler is used to lengthen the illusion of time in a show, which I personally do like in a way. With Pokémon it makes sense, as it shows just how big the region is, and we get to see interesting sides to this world. Pokémon in particular seems to have some fillers that fans are more fond of than in, say, Bleach or Naruto. (Dragonball Z had some notable ones, though not all of the fillers were well-received from what I've gathered.) It's also said filler does nothing in character development, but I could argue against that here.

Ash got cocky in this episode because he won two badges. A young trainer he battled against was fascinated by his winnings, which made him too proud. As Ash is still considered a novice trainer, the fact that he's gotten as far as he did was getting to him fairly quickly. And as he's striving to become the very best that no one ever was, as he's one step closer to reaching that goal and is excited to get another badge, it's inevitable he'd get a big head at some point. If I remember correctly, this shows back up again when he faces Lt. Surge, but we'll get there eventually. During the battle with A.J., Pidgeotto was a nice choice, but he underestimated strategy fairly quickly, which is odd since he was learning slightly about strategy, but that's what cockiness does to you.

I totally forgot how cool A.J. was from the get-go. He sounds just as cocky as Ash, which I think was the point, but the difference is he's confident in himself, and he knows it. His training methods are rather rough, as they are trained to exhaustion and are made to jump into water just to shake it off (though I have to admit that is clever), but the episode made it clear with the disappearance of his Sandshrew that he does care for his Pokémon deep down. Really a damn shame we never saw AJ again in the anime with exception to the Orange Islands opening theme. Even then, the training reminded me a bit of dojos. Which is interesting as this is the first episode where we see a gym that's not recognized by the Pokémon League. There are apparently a few of these gyms across the region specifically for training, much like the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City (even though it originally was an official gym), and if I remember correctly, we do see these from time to time. Though of course, as we learn later on with Gary, there are more than eight gyms across the region that are recognized by the Pokémon League, but I do believe they say you have to meet the requirement of eight badges from any gym. I really do wish we got to focus on those kinds of gyms more in the anime, especially since the anime's gone on much longer than the intended year-and-a-half.

Back to A.J., I believe he's either an Ace Trainer or Tamer judging from the whip, but he's probably more-or-less just a regular trainer who doesn't identify himself as anything. The move Sandshrew used last made me wonder what it was, but listening to it again, he says “Fissure” (his accent is a bit hard to understand at times), which would explain the ground breaking apart and Team Rocket getting all beaten up. Apparently Pokémon Yellow version makes a reference to him as a Youngster with a Sandshrew that does have Fissure in its move-pool, something I have totally forgotten about. Also, that's really cool to have seen a prototype Macho Brace prior to Generation III. Sure, it's called “Strength Intensifier”, but that's pretty much what it is. So he invented it in the anime-verse, then? Perhaps?

And here we have Team Rocket musing over their motto, and a first instance of their sneaky methods in broad daylight (laying a trap in episode five probably counts, but Ash and Misty were nowhere near it). I've said this a few times, but I'm going to keep saying that I really do love their chemistry here. Makes you wonder why they never explored more of their backstory in this season if they expected this to be only 82 episodes. Them joining Team Rocket would've been shown much more earlier and we would've been able to see how they got to be close friends, but I guess Takeshi Shudo wanted to make them as mysterious as possible. Now for some reason, I didn't notice that James' voice actually changed here at the end of the episode, I actually thought that Ted Lewis was still James, but apparently Eric Stuart took over during the battle at the end. I wonder why that happened. I knew Eric Stuart would be James fairly early on, at least right before “Here Comes the Squirtle Squad!”, but I never knew it was in this episode. He apparently tried to sound similar to Ted Lewis here to make it not as noticeable. Which takes a good voice actor to pull off, and he sure did fool me here. He probably stops sounding like Ted Lewis' James' voice by the next episode.

(Also “pussy-footing” and “moment of tooth”. Wow xD.)

Worth noting is the gag in the gym. I don't know what the gags were in the original (chances are they're a play on words), but they got a bit clever with the mess-up of words. Puns really are hard to translate over, so I feel that one of 4KIDS' few strengths in their dubs is that they were able to make up their own jokes for those particular scenes. Sure, just about every dubbing company does this, but you have to give credit where credit is due, and for the most part 4KIDS was good at writing jokes.

So where Seymour and Samurai fell flat for me, A.J. made up for his coolness, and thus kept the episode from being a bore. I'm actually curious as to who is more popular in the fandom, he or Giselle, though that really should be a no-brainer. There's just something about high-class Lasses with Cubones that stick out more than a random trainer with an awesome Sandshrew. Also, there's this:

I personally can't tell for the life of me the difference between filler episodes and regular episodes, even when it's spelled out for me.

A filler is an episode in which if you skipped it, you wouldn't miss anything of importance, plot and developmentwise.

For example - If you skipped EP001, you would miss everything Ash beginning his journey and meeting Pikachu whereas if you skipped BW Episode N 005 (Ampharos one) you would miss nothing that would be relevant in future episodes.

Ugh, I disliked AJ's faux-Southern accent tbh, as well as his cockiness in general. I at least liked that Ash got a reality check after losing to AJ's Sandshrew that humbled him a bit though, because his ego was expanding really fast tbh. AJ's battle with Team Rocket was interesting as well; Sandshrew knowing Fissure was a surprise.

AJ seemed like such a jerk and I didn't like him at all. Ash may have been cocky himself but his heart was in the right place and I wish he had beaten AJ instead of losing. Sandshrew was strong and cool however like when it used Fissure.

It seemed to be exciting that AJ was on a 98 winning streak and beat Ash and TR to obtain a 100 winning streak. Disappointed that AJ never appeared again and that the Gym is unofficial but at least in Yellow, there is a Trainer based on him.

"The Dragon that is immune to Dragon and the Fairy that is weak to Fairy."
Sugimori art used; Peace to Dragons and Fairies
Banner created by me

AJ's win streak was impressive even tho I didn't like him ha ha. I mean winning so many battles with his Sandshrew just to qualify as an official gym was a good story line for such a simple character. ^^